Something's amiss. Everything a disparate mess of mental malady mixing into single bloody concoction. Spiteful fog that hazes and sneers, I spit out and expel the crimson rot from my lungs and watch the spores weighed down by moisture descend like paratroopers. Readying themselves for the front lines on hills and valleys and creases of rolled up quilt covers. I sneeze into this room devoid of light, where whimsy finds its warranty long expired and joy is reduced to amassing takeout bags that block my wardrobe like forbidden land. How long have I worn this same shirt, I wonder passively, all too absently. It sticks to my heaving chest as another sharp sneeze excises the train of thought altogether. Another rolls into decrepit station, its wheels grinding and shrieking on the tracks to remind me how amiss it all is. Is it morning or is it evening? Surely not something so mundane as midday, noon is no way to start a story I don't think. I don't think a lot these days, ever since I met her. It? It beckons and I slide chain into lock with mind in fearful vice. A gnawing terror of her, she sleeps in my lungs and knocks behind apartment door, ever clawing. Another sneeze and the thought is lost. 

Like the thrum of an old engine, my phone buzzes noisefully. The disorienting journey across my bed in lazing roll almost threatens another missed call but this time I do manage. Somehow, I answer the phone and the voice greets my ailing ear like sick comedy. I couldn't laugh if I wanted to, the function lost in all that stupefying haze that has me absent long enough to be long dead for this outside world I no longer long for. Too frightening with her waiting jeer ready to dismember me in so simple of a look.  I've become so resolute in my reclusion, becoming dead to my job, my friends and of course family too. Family that now tortures me with nostalgic sound of voice and worry. 

"Sam? Jesus you finally fucking picked up! Are you okay? We've been freaking out, like everyone! Where are you? Are you okay? Say something, please."

Is that my name? Do I like green eggs and ham? I wonder with waning curiosity what this voice demands of me. I can't understand the half of her meaning, but commands hold a certain sway in my spore filled brain. "Something please."  I mutter mindlessly, the words spilling out like stale water from leaky faucet, the meaning like blood from stone. 

The frustration on the other end is palpable and yet it passes through me like poltergeist, leaving just a faint chill. "Sam... is this really the time for that? You're scaring us, there's all this talk of missing persons and 'potential cult recruiting activities' like... ahaha, what? What cult? This town barely has couple hundred people in it and I'd recognise half of them." She talks into the silence assuming it can hear her. There's no cult, that much is true. Only her, a walking eclipse. Carrying the conversation for two, the girl on the other end talks and talks and talks and I only listen for the instructions. The rest is so meaningless, I think with husking breath. What worth is there in worry when I'm already in such disarray? I simply serve as bait to spread her gift further, a tempting goal as I consider my predicament. This thing talking is my... sister? Mother? Girlfriend? It hardly matters, once she asks me where I am again I'll be all too eager to oblige and draw her in. I almost crack a smile, but know these wants are not earnestly mine. 

Cell-phone slips between sluggish digits and dials a tone of disorder into the ground as it continues its spiel. With herculean effort I find myself vertical and plot a difficult journey to the ensuite. Almost collapsing into the small bathroom, I lament my victory as much as I enjoy it. I'll see what I'm becoming again, how I've changed since last time I managed it here without a loss of footing and a trailing of thought to places unknown and ill remembered. Am I ill? I grab onto the sides of the sink bowl for dear life and stare into the shattered shards ahead at my own fragmented image. Or perhaps the mirror is fully intact and what I see is what I get. Sam I am. The absurdity of thought that takes place my brain is almost enough to finally crack that smile. 

My visage is a poor spectacle in an almost magical way. Weeks ago I would stand here and observe a well put together woman, now I'm being pulled apart and the mirror pulls no punches in relaying that gleefully. Sadistic reflection, informing me of pale skin only darkening around my heavy eyes. Bloodshot eyes, half empty eyes. I barely even blink them anymore. My once straight hair is a mess of tangled frizz and I couldn't care less anymore, sleep tugs at me with unforgiving teeth and I wonder how long I can even keep my eyes open anymore. A torrent of exhaustion throws me against the wall and steals the air from my lungs with a pretty spread of black bacterium that makes victim of shower curtain. I don't even notice the contaminated mess I live in anymore. Not until it draws me in with mind of its own. It tells me I'm no longer in control. Not anymore, so says the raven spores, this accursed mewling darkness that tightens my chest. So says the raven: "Nevermore." 

I watch the black like a static spiral and find myself mesmerised by horrifying beauty. I used to understand how wrong it was, but now I fall in line so helplessly. Pretty... her spores, that inky, deathly corruption. It's so pretty if I really stare. A loss of balance and a weak fluttering of flesh and bone and mind, I'm on the floor. The ceiling spins and the black it holds really does become a spiral. Finally, I think, as my stupidity freefalls into something other. 

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." 

Finally I smile and it grows wider than Cheshire's finest feline. I don't know if I can even call myself Sam anymore, there's more of her in me than there is is me. I don't mind because I can't, instead I pass out on bathroom floor with grimacing grin. 

How long between then and now? How long since I first met her? An ordinary day that ended so spectacularly. It gave me chills at the time, but I've changed considerably and the retrospective is all too enlightening. I first met her eyes in a lonely little place during my quiet walk home. Finally the weekend I thought, freedom at last I privately cheered. Not that it lasted all too long. Freedom that is. Wait, what was I thinking about? Oh, that's right. Her eyes had me under subtle spell, it was fearful and pessimistic at the time. I remember considering her an unapproachable presence and had failed to consider that she could be the one to make the approach. A public park under dull grey clouds and arms holding mine from behind, followers of hers that seemed completely taken by her power until nothing but pawnful puppets yet lingered to persuade their footfalls. I remember pitying them, trying so hard to break free as the new mother approached and pulled me into her. Took my mouth and pushed something deep with hers. Letting it fester and build, turning me into naught but anticipating hive primed for incubation. Black clot on my rationale, I walked home and instinctively knew my life was no longer mine. Seuss would tell me to smile, I'd later agree as I spun on blackened tile. I thought... that is, I fought... I resisted her cloying hold as stubbornly as exhausted office worker would be able. Locking doors, learning to let go of outside temptation save for my annoying need for sustenance. Even the junk I ordered kept me alive long enough to fall deeper into doting darkness. 

Until I finally wake up. So many missed calls for little old me? What was my name again? It's like the letters have been blotted over in thick black ink. Half my mind is redacted words and yet the smile only grows, as though I'm meant to forget. Made for faltering thought as obeying her becomes second nature. So often does she knock and so rudely had I denied her entry. I sit up and cough the spores into my hand with unkempt joy, slinking out from under messy covers to answer the door. 

"Let me in, Sam! I know you're in here! I'm not leaving until you open up, I'll get the owner if I have to!" Oh, it's that phone girl. I almost forgot that she is more than just disembodied voice and ugly tone. I'll give her to the mother... a gift to make up for all this impoliteness. I've not been cordial nor considerate and it feels so awful, being bad makes my fingertips sting with restless need.

I try to tell the girl I'm coming but my throat is too hoarse, I've not had water in a long while. Hydration isn't very necessary anymore but it would be nice, if I get too dry I could shrivel. So parched but not for drink, I thirst for the satisfaction of opening this door and letting this all consuming haze finally lift and reveal the remains of myself. A silver platter of person, serving scrappy seconds. If I'm only leftovers, I'll need to pledge every fibre of myself to my mother to hope at being enough to keep. I'd like to be kept, I think drunkenly with giddy hope overwriting that despairing dread. If you don't remember a loss... isn't it a double negative? I smile easily, black veins under my eyes and pooling into the whites, hand reaching out to pull at pesky chain. 

The door opens as another closes, my black eyes meeting the lost loved one's as my lopsided smile and state of disorder gives her pause then rewind. She backs up a step and covers her mouth with trembling hand, is it really so bad? Is there something on my face, I wonder. I let out a discordant giggle and reach towards her like a living dead girl, clasping shoulders with fingers wreathed in coal-black corruption that stains her lovely blouse. Oh, her shoulders tremble so fiercely as well. Am I frightening while attempting to be friendly? I only want for her this elating freedom from thought and responsibility and image. Such a relief not to be so obsessive over petty presentability pressures and dour dysmorphic daydreaming. This girl is so pretty, but at so steep a cost. I'll let her descend into a new dream of intoxicating inaction and blissful, waking nightmare. It'll be my pleasure. 

My head tilts as though pulled by invisible string and I see the mother ahead, having waited all too long for her good girl to go off. An expiry of infected struggle. I smile brightly with cracked black lips as she shrouds us in a coat of loving midnight, my lips descending upon the paralysed visitor's before they can think to close. Soon she won't need to think at all and the whole world will become better for it! My malfeasant mouthful of corruptive essence pushes into her so swiftly as though controlled by will of its own, populating her with spiralling spore. It doesn't matter if she was my sister or not in our past lives, we're both daughters of the mother now. I only hope this girl is a faster learner than I, judging from our one sided calls I'd wager she's much more used to her own company at the very least. Isolation is important at this stage. 

"_{Come, my child.}"

The mother holds out her gnarled hand and my eyes hood, feeling sick pleasure from the command. Finally words I can follow easily. The keys to my apartment slip from limp fingers and drop onto the ground for its new tenant. I join my mother and her hands close around mine, so cold and yet bringing such burning heat they threaten to boil. I giggle and a few stray spores dance in the air before me, I truly am something new now and happier for it. As I am led to new home I wonder how many of us there are. 

As the sable stare sets in and I feel my thoughts fall back into a neat row, I consider how many more we could become.